Article of the Month -
July 2015

Dimension Cadastre – Stepping Beyond Limits

1)
This paper was presented at the FIG Working Week in Sofia, Bulgaria,
17-21 May 2015. It presents identified trends of the digital age
affecting cadastral surveying, and questions what may happen to the
traditional surveyor. Many factors have an impact on the way how
geographic information systems, including cadastres, are perceived.

SUMMARY

New information and communication technologies, along with economic,
financial and political globalisation, the increasing movement of
persons and cultural and social change, all have an impact on the way
how geographic information systems, including cadastres, are perceived.

In Switzerland, the digital age for cadastral surveying started more
than 20 years ago. The dynamic context mainly in the fields of
geoinformation and spatial data infrastructures, however has
implications, which need to be reflected on. A Think Tank was
established in 2012 with the aim to identify the current trends and to
develop a strategy for the cadastre to adjust to those trends.

A first result was a discussion paper published in May 2014, where
several trends were being acknowledged. These touch on issues such as
technology push vs. citizen pull, crowd-sourcing, open data, big
data-data mining, legitimacy often prevailing legality, Internet of
things, linked data, social media, social change, etc. This article
presents the identified trends.

1. CHANGING WORLD

Examining the evolution of the cadastre, of surveying and its various
aspects means above all tracing the development of methods and
technologies from drawing board and pencil to computer, from 2D to 3D,
from terrestrial measurement to global navigation satellite system, from
terrestrial surveying to photogrammetry, from databases to knowledge
bases, and from analogue to digital technology. Boundaries between the
private and the public sphere are disappearing.

Technology: Today’s devices no longer are passive
terminals linked to central systems. They are computers in their own
right, equipped with diverse sensors and countless apps; they even
can show us the way around due to the built-in global navigation
satellite systems. This allows for a contextual presence, in situ.
These devices also can take photos and create video footage
instantly – a far cry from Polaroid technology – since digital
images can be modified, transmitted and stored "on the spot". This
is a key factor for the coming decade. Our societies are moving away
from the written word towards imagery, forming new semantics, new
languages and a new framework of understanding.

Data: Massive data collections are being generated also
with help of those devices. The use of data mining, an approach to
analyze and search such large databases can make use – or misuse –
of those data collections. This development also caused considerable
anger and concern throughout the world following the revelations by
Edward Snowden. In that same context, the issue of open data is
gaining ground, especially within public administrations, based on
the concept of the openness of the Internet and open source
software.

Social networks: The rapid rise of social networks brings
about the biggest change in social behaviour in decades. People are
enabled to “socialise” freely with others at low cost, with varying
degrees of commitment and for an indefinite duration in a new kind
of “common interest club”. This represents a complete restructuring
of social relationships. It is not driven by religious movements or
cliques, and even less by political circles or unions. Decisions are
taken by each individual citizen. This empowerment is the very
essence of the ongoing social revolution.

2. POSITIONING

We are witnessing the end of surveying in the conventional sense,
mainly because positioning might soon be just as accurate and more or
less obtainable in real time by the above mentioned devices. The
contributions from – traditional – surveyors will decrease, which also
can mean the end of the surveying profession as we knew it up to now.
But what does that mean for the future of the surveying profession?
There are indications that surveyors in the future will have a role to
play in the transition process, i.e. as professionals in charge of
changing and adapting representations of properties, and the management
of land and augmented reality.

One thing that seems certain is that official cadastral surveying
provides authentic and certified data that are essential for a country’s
economic development through guarantee of the required geometrical and
attributive accuracy. And this official guarantee needs to be retained,
as numerous political and social decisions depend directly on official
cadastral data.

What may change, however, is the method of data collection.
Global navigation satellite systems in combination with smart devices
may provide data, collected by citizens, through visual recognition. It
is by pointing the smart device at a building, a land parcel, or even a
landscape that recognition in its entirety will work. The territory will
signal our position to us with absolute accuracy. In a manner of
speaking, the land will become the map encompassing all maps.

The theoretical and practical consequences will certainly concern the
legal recognition of such methods, or more precisely of the algorithms
behind. Up to now we set out to define databases of objects, cadastral
layers, etc. But in the future, in addition to all the existing or new
databases, we will also be storing and archiving algorithms. These will
require official certification because they will form the basis of the
reconstitution of datasets and data.

3. THE OBJECTS OF THE CADASTRES

The legal mandate has been an essential factor for the traditional
cadastres, based on surveying and land registration. But increasingly,
and in the wake of digital technology and the political call for
professional land management, new categories of legal land objects are
evolving and thus give rise to new levels of representation.

While technological and political pressures led to the rapid
development of the cadastre over the last two decades, particularly
following the advent of the Internet some 20 years ago, we have to
anticipate that social changes – increased involvement of the public
(access to open data, apps and open source software) and social networks
(e.g. participation in activities such as Wikipedia, eBirds, Youtube) –
will give rise to radical new approaches, namely a society driven more
by a legitimate than a legal impetus.

If the legal basis was a constitutional element in democracies,
especially in the West, the situation seems to become somewhat different
today. In fact it now appears that an action deemed “legitimate” can
prevail over a national legal system. An example can be seen in
Switzerland in connection with the blacklist of countries regarded by
the OECD as “tax havens”. Although Switzerland’s position was based on a
sovereign and legal foundation, the “legitimate” pressure exerted by
some of the major OECD member states sufficed to cause Switzerland to
quickly bend one of its most essential principles, namely the rule of
law.

The differentiation between a position based on a legal foundation
and one based on “legitimate” actions is a constituting element of
societies today, and especially of global governance. As more and more
people become involved in social networks, they will continue to exert
pressure in this sense, and if we consider the development of public
opinion, transparency and “political correctness” in society in the
course of the last few decades, there can no longer be much doubt about
this process of societal change.

4. CADASTRAL DIMENSIONS

When representation was planar, we were dealing with a world in which
objects were described in two dimensions; maps and plans were
sufficient. The representation of pipes and conduits beneath the ground,
and of the height of buildings, slope of roofs, etc., led to the
creation of what we now call 3D within geographic information systems.

BBut modifications, and above all their preservation together with
their still legible notes on old plans and maps despite the fact that
they had been partly erased, gave rise to the illusion of historical
development. Today, with the aid of digital storage of data it is – and
will remain – easier to obtain a history of modifications of the
cadastral system and thus of the recorded objects. In areas such as
tourism and land-use planning, as well as regional economic development,
there are also calls for data to be attached or linked historically to
buildings and land. Temporal (4D) data of this type are not currently
regarded as an integral part of the cadastral system, but they should be
incorporated in the future, also at the legislative level.

5. THE INTERNET OF THINGS

Smart devices act as intelligent systems equipped with functions for
geo-localisation, visualisation, simulation and anticipation. They will
act with algorithms and huge databases that are fed and accessed via
cloud-services on the Internet, basically anytime anywhere.

What is lacking is an understanding of the implications for the
cadastral system. Let us imagine how it may look like in twenty years
time from now: we can assume that, in addition to surface, line and
point objects, there will also be virtual and algorithmic objects.
Together these will form the basis of a new cadastral system. Each of
these objects will belong to a new nomenclature recordable in URI format
so that it can be directly accessed via the Internet. This will resemble
a huge virtual library in which each object will have an identifier just
as each book has its own form of identification (ISBN). Initially, all
cadastral objects will be provided with a uniform resource identifier
(URI), in order to be addressed; later they will be given physical (IP)
addresses to make it possible to connect smart systems associated with
the objects.

As far as the objects forming the present-day cadastre are concerned,
it can already be predicted that in the future they will mainly be
linked with each other via the Internet platform. This is only possible
when an infinite number of IP addresses is available, which will be very
useful for urban development, construction of new roads, etc. It will be
possible to provisionally deposit measurement instruments in order to
simulate situations such as rainfall, landslides or exposure to
sunlight.

SuSurveyors in the future will ideally be the architects of this
transformation and acting as brokers of the transition process. They
will thus have to evolve towards a transformational profession.

6. AUGMENTED CITIZEN

In the previous chapters concerning the major changes taking place
today, we have noted that there has been an increase in the role played
by citizens (grouped into social networks) in the value-added chain.
Thanks primarily to the Internet and so-called smart systems and
devices, people now find themselves in a situation in which they can
directly intervene in information and production systems. Blogs,
feedback, applications like Mash-up, etc., enable them to contribute to
databases, including geographic information systems, to such an extent
that these have come to rely heavily on their input. Consider, for
example, feedback on restaurants, hotels, travel, visits to museums,
etc., in the tourism sector, or reviews of music and books, or comments
on numerous other products. Everything, or almost everything, can now be
reviewed, commented on or ranked by anyone. The information about such
items is significantly modified because it has acquired a subjective and
more or less emotional dimension. This kind of contribution is
unexpected for specialists working with “cold” objects like maps and
cadastres! The way forward has been mapped out, and we are moving in the
direction of integrated information systems: the objective and the
subjective, the legal and legitimate, the real and the virtual. Through
this integration we describe the core of our vision for which we have
enhanced the dimensions, the objects and the involved players (or
stakeholders).

One of the major challenges to be faced in the future concerns the
integration of the public as stakeholders in the cadastral system. The
solution will neither be obvious, nor easy. Initially the answer will be
to prompt people to submit comments regarding, for example, footpaths by
asking them to intervene prospectively to report identified dangers and
problems and to give warnings so that their contribution can be clearly
beneficial to others.

7. THE NEW "COMMON PROPERTY" AND STAKEHOLDERS

A new notion is emerging between private and public property, namely
one that could be referred to as “common property” or “common asset”,
which to a certain extent takes the form of shared knowledge, or public
and open know-how. To better illustrate, we may look at examples from
various newspaper articles initiating a web-based platform for reporting
of information that permits people to describe an aspect of specific
locations in for example 100 characters.

Combining data and knowledge, such initiatives can create a common
asset. Other examples are knowledge about footpaths, Google Street View,
City Wikis, as well as dedicated web sites such as Craiglist (San
Francisco), eBird.org for birds, virtual visits to tourist destinations,
but also knowledge of the past or present development of a particular
city, district or street. At the same time, these private and open
knowledge collections can be link or combined with public and
authoritative data of different levels defined by geomatics, cadastre,
geography, or geology.

For surveying, cadastre and land register professionals, the concept
of “common property” as neither private nor public, but somewhere in
between, certainly raises questions. It may mean that the professional
communities may have to rethink their approach to these issues.

8. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

In a kind of metaphorical reversal, it is the land that has taken
today the upper hand and determines our activities; the land is becoming
the map, so to speak. By looking at the landscape with the aid of mobile
and intelligent devices such as smart phones, tablets, or drones, we are
able to obtain images of augmented reality.

The virtual world has for many years been used mainly for special
effects on big screens and will increasingly be used in the future,
whether for activities via webcams or via applications for smart
devices. There are three key elements that play a role in this:
first, the Internet provides a common platform and simplifies the
communication between systems that were previously incompatible; second,
the introduction of geo-localisation via global navigation satellite
systems means that any location can be viewed and accessed in real time
and at any time; and third, visual recognition makes it possible to
remotely identify, for example, the names of mountains, sites and
monuments. The combination of these key elements makes it possible to
bring more or less complex datasets and images onto the screen.

Future discussions will mainly revolve around issues relating to open
data and open source software. Initially public administrations and
politicians had good intentions by establishing and using large
databases, mainly for providing security and public safety. However, the
debate has taken a drastic new turn with the capacities of data mining
and certain algorithms, and above all the use to which they have been
put to, in particular in the USA by the National Security Agency to spy
on people and organisations. Doubts regarding the non-private use of
personal data will remain until a technical or legal solution is found
to assure better privacy protection.p>

Another aspect of the ongoing discussion concerns the question of how
to open up “big data” to the public, and not only to companies. The idea
based on the model of Wikipedia is to offer virtual communities (social
networks) the possibility of accessing these data without restriction
and free of charge. The introduction of the Internet allowed for the
concept of free of charge information access, which often led to radical
modification of business models and activities.

So how can we incorporate the opening up process without harming the
privacy at the same time (a question that is illustrated by the
discussions around Facebook)? And how can we retain the concept of free
of charge information access without harming the business sector? These
are social issues that the current debate is only now beginning to
address.

As far as the future of the cadastre is concerned, there are several
key issues to be discussed:

First, the growing importance of “legitimate” versus “legal”,which
can be interpreted as a confrontation between a priori and a posteriori
legislation. To a certain extent, there is a shift happening between the
European continental (a priori) civil code and the Anglo-Saxon (a
posteriori) common law jurisdiction systems that could be observed for
the last two decades.

Second, there is the question of the relevance of introducing new
objects into cadastral systems. Following the introduction of 3D, we are
now witnessing the emergence of 4D with the history of modifications.

Third, there is the question of the public as stakeholder, as
consumer, player, and co-creator of future information systems.
Crowdsourcing appears to be invading the Internet and it is conceivable
that it can affect matters, which were reserved for public
administrations so far. It might therefore be essential to prepare for
this development, even if the debate has barely commenced.

And finally, there is the central question of ownership, the
private/public aspect and the new concept of the “common asset”. This is
still in its infancy to the extent to which, in our society, it
initially concerns the issue of transparency. But if we can see the
names of the owners of all plots of land throughout the country on our
smart phone, it is difficult to imagine how the question of protection
of the private sphere can be addressed. The question of transparency and
privacy has not yet been resolved at the social and political levels.

In this discussion paper we have considered some of the issues which
will be discussed in the future and will concern society as a whole. But
we are well aware that, for the involved professionals, another matter
appears to be just as urgent, namely the redistribution of tasks. In
other words, who will be responsible for what in the future at the
municipal, cantonal and federal levels, in the private and public
sectors, and at the professional and private levels.

Our conclusion can perhaps be summed up by reversing Alfred
Korzybski’s aphorism “The map is not the territory”, BUT “The territory
is the map”.

This article is a shortened and summarized version of the report
"Beyond Limits" by the Swiss "Dimension Cadastre" think tank (more
information at www.cadastre.ch/vision). The intention of that report was
not to predict the future, but to identify and discuss trends that are
felt within society and within the professional community.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Daniel Steudler holds a PhD degree from the University of Melbourne,
Australia and is a scientific associate with the Swiss Federal Office of
Topography swisstopo, working for the Federal Directorate for Cadastral
Surveying. He is active in FIG-Commission 7 for many years and was chair
of the FIG-Task Force on «Spatially Enabled Society». He published
widely in the cadastral field and consulted internationally in land
administration and cadastral issues. Since March 2015, he is chair of
the EuroGeographics "Cadastre + Land Registry".Knowledge Exchange
Network.

International Federation of Surveyors, FIG, is a United Nations and World Bank recognized
non-governmental organization of national member associations
and covers the whole range of professional fields within the
global surveying community. It provides an international forum
for discussion and development aiming to promote professional
practice and standards.